Twenty fun things to do with a time machine.

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/chrono.html This site has a really cool article about the different ways to write a time travel plot, and at the end I found this:

Twenty Fun Things To Do With A Time Machine
1. Take half a critical mass of plutonium back to meet itself.
2. Infest the timestream with time-beavers.
3. Shoot the gunsmith.
4. Take one end of a space-time wormhole and throw it into the other end.
5. Release cloned Michael Crichtons into the Jurassic.
6. Organise a mutual infanticide pact.
7. Prevent this suggestion ever being made.
8. Persuade Lewis Carroll to write "The Time Machine".
9. Abduct your grandchildren and bring them up as your own kids.
10. Plant a suicide note in JFK's pocket.
11. Develop the temporal equivalent of waterskiing behind a speeding Tardis.
12. Swap Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin at birth.
13. Genetically engineer yourself for maximum skill at genetic engineering.
14. Go to Hiroshima, 06-Aug-45, and run amok with a chainsaw.
15. Establish a Time Patrol Corps to prevent such frivolous tamperings with history (in 1897).
16. Find whoever coined the phrase "Time Paradox" and hand them their own skull. Repeatedly.
17. Simplify the controls on the average VCR remote by substituting chronoscopy for television.
18. Steal Schrödinger's cat.
19. Sell ten-year-old yoghurt without contravening its "best before" date.
20. Park your Time Machine on the Turin Shroud and travel backwards to see where it really came from.


So, what else would you do with a time machine?

 

I would be far too afraid to tamper with the past, lest the ripple effect of my actions changed things for the worse, but number twelve cracked me up.

They all did, really, but I think twelve made me laugh the hardest.

 

This reminds me a bit of David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself.

Although from what I remember of that novel, David thought it might be fun to have an all out, one man, temporal snogging session. :redface:

 

I would take the xkcd route, and go back in time to make out with myself.

Also, I would swap Jesus with Lewis Black. The results would be HILARIOUS.

 

I would go back in time to see all these historical things. Go back to 1776 and see what it was like living there, try to save Lincoln possibly, see what Woodstock and Beatlemania and the crazy 80s were like. That sort of thing.

 

:redface:Me too!:redface:

 

I'd have my cake and eat it too. Then I'd say to my mom "AND YOU THOUGHT I COULDN'T DO IT!

 

What would I do, or what would I write about?

I would travel into the future, learn a new technology, then come back and be the one who makes it happen.

Hey, after all, I'd have to recoup all the research costs I invested to make time travel work in the first place.

 

i would definitely do the same, cog.

 

I posted this on the other forum I like to frequent, and there were some replies that I just had to share.

 

You have much more intelligent goals than I would have. I mean, I would go back to people before I met them and scare the bejeebers out of them by knowing everything about them. ("Heeeeey! How's that rash doing? What? Oh, I don't know, you just look like the kind of person to have that type of fungus, I guess...")

 

I would go and hold myself as a baby. And take pictures of the day I was born, because my parents didn't.

 

I would go to Hiroshima, and instead of the chainsaw, I would tell exactly what was about to happen. They would obviously think I was joking, but right before they die, they'll have an OH SHI- moment.

You could play the role of the Grim Reaper, dress up, find people about to die and kill them with a scythe.

You could go 30 years into the future, take all the new technology, and bring it back and show to scientists. Wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.

Become Prometheus, and show some cavemen fire.

Become an apostle.

See what would happen if you saved Jesus from being crucified.

Be in the background of famous photographs.

Hit the "go forward in time" button and wait until something stops you.

Go to some huge historic disaster and time travel right as your about to die.

Follow some random person around, telling them exactly what was going to happen to them every single day. Watch them go insane.

Join an ancient army and dominate with your M16.

Convince Shakespeare to name a character after you.

Rip off someones famous quote before they say it.

...and that's all I got.

 

Haha, now that gave me a good laugh! Give Abe some bunny ears.

 

I'd go back 5 weeks and tell myself to not use my phone quite as much as I was while I was a prisoner of the hospital in the city, because the phone bill turns out to be the phone bill of DOOM...

 

I'd go forward as far as it would take me. I'm guessing that would be a one-way trip >_>

 

I would withdraw all my money from my bank in the future, return to the present and then deposit it. After a few hundred times of doing that I would go into the future with all my money and see how many hovercars and robots I can buy.

 

So what would you do in the future when you randomly found yourself bankrupt?

 

Those are all things I'd do.

I would try to stop--or at least warn people about--disasters. Stop Lincoln and Kennedy from being shot, sneak enough lifeboats on the Titanic (I'd bring along a trustworthy person to help me do that), try to evacuate people before Katrina hit, that sort of thing. And then when I showed up in history books--"a mysterious stranger warned Lincoln not to go to Ford's theater. An individual by the same name helped evacuate New Orleans"--and laugh about it, knowing it was me.

 

At that point I would travel into the future and get a copy of any mainstream band's album. I would bring it back and learn how to play every single song and then record them all on an album which would be kept very quiet. When the band comes to releasing the album I have a major lawsuit for plagarism!

And if that didn't work I'd still have my robots and hovercars